The present invention generally relates to an apparatus for receiving a digital broadcasting signal, and an apparatus for receiving/recording/reproducing the digital broadcasting signal. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a digital broadcasting signal receiving apparatus, and a receiving/recording/reproducing apparatus suitable for directly recording/reproducing such a digital broadcasting signal.
The conventional digital signal receiving/recording/reproducing technique is described in, for instance, JP-A-8-98164, namely the receiving/recording/reproducing apparatus receives the digital signal by which a plurality of information is multiplexed and the multiplexed information is transmitted, and then records this digital signal. The conventional technique describes the receiving means for receiving the digital information signal by which a plurality of information is multiplexed and then the multiplexed information is transmitted, and for selecting desired information; and also the recording means for recording the information received by the receiving means. Also, JP-A-8-56350 discloses such a conventional technique that the desirable program is selected when the digital signal by which a plurality of information is multiplexed and then the multiplexed information is transmitted is received to represent the programs. In the conventional technique, such a program seeking apparatus is described. That is, a plurality of programs are converted into packets by adding packet identifiers to the respective programs, and furthermore, the transfer control data indicative of the relationship between these programs and the packet identifiers are converted into the packets. These packets are multiplexed to be transmitted as the multiplexed signals from which the respective programs are seeked.
The above-mentioned conventional technique of JP-A-8-98164 has not described the following idea. That is, when the recorded programs are reproduced, only the information related to a desirable program is separated from the multiplexed information, and then the separated program is reproduced. On the other hand, another conventional technique of JP-A-8-56350 discloses such a seeking means for deriving a desirable signal from the digital multiplexed signal and for representing the derived desirable signal. However, generally speaking, in a conventionally available VTR (Video Tape Recorder) for recording/reproducing an analog signal, when a recorded program is reproduced, the program can be reproduced by merely manipulating a reproducing switch, and without performing any other complex operations. To the contrary, even when the digital information signal processing technique as explained in JP-A-8-98164 would be combined with another conventional technique as explained in JP-A-8-56350, cumbersome operations such as the program seeking operation should be carried out during the program reproducing operation. As a consequence, it is not possible to realize such a program reproducing operation that the desirable recorded program can be immediately reproduced by simply manipulating a single switch.
An object of the present invention is to provide a digital broadcasting signal receiving apparatus as well as a digital broadcasting signal receiving/recording/reproducing apparatus, capable of immediately reproducing a program recorded in a direct form of a digital signal without executing any cumbersome operations similar to the above-described analog signal recording/reproducing VTR.
To achieve this object, a digital broadcasting signal receiving apparatus, according to an aspect of the present invention, is provided. The digital broadcasting signal receiving apparatus include channel decoder for receiving digital transfer information and for demodulating the received digital transfer information into a bit stream having a predetermined packet structure, the digital transfer information being produced by that a plurality of logical channel signals constituted by video, audio, and data are multiplexed as digital information on a single bit stream having a predetermined packet format and are transferred, first packet separating apparatus for extracting a designated packet from a bit stream outputted from the channel decoding means, a source decoder for decoding a logical channel signal outputted from the first packet separating apparatus to output the decoded logical channel as a television signal, second packet separating apparatus for extracting at least a portion of the designated packets from the bit stream outputted from the channel decoder, output apparatus for outputting a bit stream output from the second packet separating apparatus toward a recording/reproducing apparatus, input apparatus for supplying a bit stream derived from the recording/reproducing apparatus to the first packet separating apparatus, and control apparatus for controlling operations of the first packet separating apparatus and the second packet separating apparatus.